In the King’s Wake: An Analysis of Emerging Maya Political Systems during the Terminal Classic Period

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As the prolonged experiment of divine rulership began to lose its effectiveness across the Maya world, the Maya people began reshaping their political systems in an attempt to address the conditions through which they were living. As the shift to the Terminal Classic Period began at sites like Waka, new forms of governance began to take shape, and political power was shifted to new parties. This study aims to answer the following questions: #1), was this an effort at transitioning power from singular authority to a more collective form of governance? #2) If so, what might this transition of power have looked like? This study seeks to answer these questions with the backdrop of new evidence supporting a possible popol nah or council house uncovered from the center of Waka’s regal-ritual landscape, Plaza 4. This may point to the coexistence of two or more political systems or parties during Waka’s last phases of occupation. This study analyzes which social groups would have been the most likely actors, responsible for commissioning such changes -either independently, or in conjunction with the courtly authority of the period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53691